(Most of this is not new info, and will be familiar to those who have worked with Macs in CPS previously, but may be new to others.)
CPS schools use more Windows desktop/laptop client computers than Macs, and the ITS department has a longer history and deeper bench of developing management tools for Windows than for Macs. But Macs are not altogether ignored, and especially in the last couple of years more such tools have been deployed.
To get to the school's distribution server (or "ADM01") on a Mac you generally will need to enter a FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) in the browser, rather than the short form which works on Windows computers (by means of some Microsoft trickery).
This form of name is a separate matter from how the server will fill in additional path components in the URL. When you connect from a Mac the server may well send you directly to the Mac Tools page. If not, click to go there. If a CPS sign-in is requested, you may need to get the school's techco or tech contact person to sign in.
Most of the utility installations or scripts on that page should be be run on a Mac that you are setting up as new in the system.
Standard Accounts should be used!
Deep Freeze is optional of course, depending on whether the school is in general using DF, and on whether these computers are going to need frequent adjustments that would inconveniently require repeated thawing.
Similarly Insight is optional, depending on the lab or classroom stuation and the school's use of Insight at all.
Joining INSTR is optional but recommended. (See next note -- it will seem to fail installation.) The INSTR membership is not exactly parallel to how it works with Windows client computers. But the big thing is that it will enable logins to the Mac by domain account names and passwords, i.e. it hooks up to Active Directory for login validation. Also, when a user does a login with a domain account, the Mac client will probably mount the school's fileserver sharing-root as a volume; but this will not point to the user's home folder on the server, as may happen with domain logins on Windows clients (if your school is set up that way).
Some of them will say they failed to install, but actually planted some seeds which will activate on a later reboot. The tool to join INSTR is in this category. After a reboot, additional steps will run in the background, and may announce progress with notices bannered along the top of the display.
(New 04/26/12) Setup and troubleshooting with recent UChicago-donated Windows 7 Dells
[This write-up still under construction, sorry.]
These were worked on at the CUIP office -- imaged with CPS Win7 image and partly remediated -- and the different people doing this introduced some variation in how that preliminary setup was done. The main points to watch out for are whether it still does automatic login (to an Administrator account) on powering up, and whether a Techco account was made.
If automatically logs in to Administrator, check that a Techco account exists. If not, create one. Make it an administrator-group account; and give it a password -- preferably the school-specific techo password. Log out of Administrator account, log in as Techco.
If not automatically logged in, log in as techco.
Running as techco:
From the school ADM01 (or saved copy of the program), try the Standard Users script.
From the school ADM01(or saved copy of the program), run the Correct Computer Name script. After script, reboot.
[Optional: Instead of these two scripts, manually rename the computer and join INSTR from the control panel, as one operation, using the Addmachine login.]
From the school ADM01(or saved copy of the program), run the Join Domain script. [Optional:see above.]
Sometimes you need to have admin rights on a computer but the “techco” login is not accepting the school-specific password you know. There are a variety of different workarounds, and contexts or tests for which of them may be applicable. Without going into instructions for each, or specifics on which ones might be good to try or useless in which circumstances, here is a list basically just naming them:
Non-school-specific techco password
Hey, type either of those more slowly and using two fingers. (Sorry!)
Norwegian CD
Flash drive transfer of Norwegian CD
INSTR login for username in GG-Tech-Schoolname group [only at some schools]. E.g. “tech5560″ at Ray or ask the techco to try her personal INSTR sign-in.
INSTR “dibbles” login.
This-computer ”architect” login.
Call CPS helpdesk
If any of these are obscure to you, try asking your TRA or CUIP contact person the next time you see us in your school with you!
(New as of 11/10/11) Adding a shared printer to a Windows 7 computer
Instructions for connecting a W7 computer to an XP shared printer
Assume the computer with the printer plugged in is called XPMACHINE.
Ensure Printer on XP machine is shared - assume it's called SHAREDPRINTER.
On the Network Browsing on your Windows 7 machine ensure you can "See" the Printer share.
Now on the Windows 7 machine do the following:
Control Panel==> add LOCAL (Yes LOCAL) printer
Create NEW port==>Local port
Portname is \\XPMACHINE\SHAREDPRINTER
Now you'll be able to print on the XP machine.
(New as of 11/03/11) Some Deep Freeze considerations
Erroneous persistent "Maintenance Mode" can be triggered by wrong system date & time. Address this by rebooting and going into BIOS Setup screen, and setting correct time there. If correct time does not hold, replace BIOS-CMOS battery on motherboard [see below]. If you're not familiar with BIOS Setup screen, ask school techco or CUIP staff to explain or demo.
The Deep Freeze console in version 7 is easier to install than previously and offers more features, including remote DF update of client computers. If your school has DF on computers but lacks a console, discuss placement with techco, lab teacher, and/or CUIP staff.
(New as of 11/03/11) Salvaging/Replacing "Coin cell" batteries on MBs
Wrong system time can make problems for DeepFreeze (see above)
When prepping computers for disposal, collect these batteries
If more replacement batteries are needed than available from disused computers, the school or CUIP can order some new
(New as of 08/22/11) SCHOOL-ADM01 pages now less accessible :-( .
CPS ITS has redesigned the layout and added some new functionalities to the SCHOOL-ADM01 pages. Unfortunately, they have added a sign-in step, and only some CPS accounts are able to use the sites. Our NSP-Techs when needing to use the SCHOOL-ADM01 sites will probably need to get the page signed-in by the school tech coordinator or your CUIP TRA.
(Partial solution, note added 10/06/11.) We are also experimenting with saving elsewhere (Dropbox or Google Docs) to share with you the scripts you may be needing to use on school computers and would previously have downloaded as needed from SCHOOL-ADM01. If you would like to participate in this, or have other ideas on how to solve or work-around this issue, please contact Russ@cuip.uchicago.edu or Help@cuip.uchicago.edu .
11/03/11-- This is now implemented in both Google Docs and Dropbox. If you do not have access, please write to mitch@uchicago.edu or Help@cuip.uchicago.edu with an email address of yours that can accept these shares (Gmail preferred for the Google shares).
(New as of 08/15/11) "Norwegian CD" Updated
We have downloaded a more recent version of the password-clearing utility, the 11-05-11 version. It can be made available to you as a burned CD or as an ISO file.
This version also has a convenient facility for running from a USB "thumb drive". Setting this up requires only copying a few small files to the USB and running an executable to make it bootable. This does not require truncating the capacity of the USB drive, as some other "make pen drive bootable" tend to do; and this use can be shared with continued use for whatever file storage you are carrying on the USB. It works just like the CD -- of course, the computer must have a new enough BIOS to allow booting from USB device. See mitch if you would like your USB thumb drive set up a bootable Norwegian "disk".
(New as of 5/20/11) A note on Windows 7 logins:
Several schools have received recent purchased/leased computers with Windows 7 installed.
If the computer is properly joined to the INSTR domain, logins will default to that domain. There are only two fields at the sign-in screen, not three as with Windows 2000 or Windows XP. To specify a domain (or local "this-computer" login), that domain shortname or computer name is used in the Username field, prefixed to the username-proper with a backslash.
To sign in with a domain, if the teacher's account (pretending the user is "iamtheteacher") is for some reason in the ADMIN domain (and this is a property of their account, not of the computer name nor where it is plugged into the network), they would write in the Username field something like:
ADMIN\Iamtheteacher
If their account is in INSTR, they could very explicitly use INSTR\Iamtheteacher. But because it defaults to INSTR, they can leave off the domain and just use "iamtheteacher"
To sign in as "techco" or as "school" on a computer called I5830W20111234U, you would write in the Username field
I5830W20111234U\Techco
(or) 5830W20111234U\School
That last choice is awful because it requires finding the awkward computer name. Happily, there is a shortcut! The computer name can be replaced with a dot.So "dot-backslash-techco" and "dot-backslash-school" are how to think of entering those local logins. Actually written thus:
(New as of 4/26/11)Sometimes the Techco account just does not accept the original default password nor the school-specific one, or else accepts the password but issues an alert for "Your password has expired, you must change it" and then contradicts it with a "You are not allowed to change your password". This might be due to either (a) a computer given from another school, with the name still reflecting the old school's unit number (so the techco pass will be set to the old school's school-specific one), or (b) a computer which has been off the network for a long while, e.g. a laptop sitting in a cart. The CPS-ITS official responses are (1) and (2) below. CUIP has fairly often resorted to (3), and the "Norwegian Disk" has probably been demonstrated for half or more of you. We are now adding (4), with particular reference to the "INSTR\Dibbles" account.
Call the Help Desk and have them connect remotely and deal with it that way.
Turn on the computer and plug it into a wired port. The daily scan should clear the "you must change password" flag, This would not apply to situation (a). The bad part about this is you have to wait until the next day.
Use the "Norwegian Disk" or your own preferred boot disk. ("Password crack" disk.)
Use some other login either defined on the computer or on the INSTR domain which would count as local admins for the computer. These might include:
Local accounts that were part of setup and in theory were deleted or had their passwords changed, but may have persisted anyway. Usernames for this kind of case might include architect, Administrator, addmachine2.
For computers that are basically functioning okay apart from this sign-in issue, and allow INSTR logins, sign in as an INSTR user whose account is a member of GG-Tech-Schoolname. This might be the personal login of the school techco or lab teacher, or a login that has been constructed for this purpose at your school, like "tech5560".
[This subpoint is new to our list now] There is an INSTR login in the username Dibbles, widely used by primary grade teachers to sync their Palm devices for DIBELS or MClassMath. But it also is something of a domain-based local admin, since that same account is used to install the associated software. So it could be tried as a way in to reset techco account as needed.
We don't post passwords on the web, so if curious you should ask your CUIP contact for the passwords associated with some of the subpoints under #4.
Technical note, for schools using INSIGHT -- If there are two teacher consoles running on the same channel (same room), one of them will be essentially view-only and will have the admin and communication options for the student stations grayed out. It seems those options are owned by the teacher console that most recently started up. To reclaim those on the other teacher computer, exit the INSIGHT teacher program and restart it. (Full reboot of the computer should not be necessary!)
The bad-looking scores on many schools' Compliance Pages, if they include bad scores for the SMS category wth a "PASS" can be considered an ongoing system error, which the techco and you need not try to correct on the individual computers.
For "SPUP" errors in the Critical Patch column, ITS now allows us to just go to Windows Update to get Service Pack 3. (We're talking Windows XP here, that is.)
If you find that your work includes opening computer cases and messing around inside, let your CUIP contacts know and we can provide a mini-toolkit (or may have one already stashed at the school).
If you find that your work includes data parking or transfers that you are not comfortable doing via your personal USB flash drive, let us know and CUIP may be able to issue one for that purpose.
CUIP/NSP-Tech Reporting Procedures and Messages
Archived older Tech Notes, removed from Main Tech notes page
[Optional: Instead of these two scripts, manually rename the computer and join INSTR from the control panel, as one operation, using the Addmachine login.]
Now on the Windows 7 machine do the following:
Related pages on this CUIP Tech Wiki